An Affordable, Wearable Stereo-Eye-Tracking Platform

TL;DR

This paper introduces an affordable, modular wearable stereo eye-tracking platform using off-the-shelf components, supporting various paradigms and emphasizing research flexibility over robustness.

Contribution

It presents a flexible, open-source hardware platform for stereo eye-tracking that supports multiple paradigms and is designed for research extensibility.

Findings

Prototype demonstrates feasibility of the hardware design.

Platform supports multiple eye-tracking paradigms within a single setup.

Hardware designs and documentation are openly available.

Abstract

Research on video-based eye-tracking has long explored stereo and glint-based methods, yet existing wearable eye trackers - both commercial and open-source - offer limited flexibility for algorithm development and comparative evaluation. We present an affordable, wearable stereo eye-tracking platform built from off-the-shelf and 3D-printable components that explicitly targets this gap. The system combines four infrared eye cameras, infrared illumination, an optional scene camera, and software support for calibration and synchronized data acquisition. By design, the platform supports multiple eye-tracking paradigms, including stereo, glint-based, and binocular approaches, within a single hardware configuration. Rather than optimizing for end-user robustness, the platform prioritizes modularity and extensibility for research use. This paper focuses on the hardware architecture and calibration pipeline and demonstrates the feasibility of the approach using a prototype implementation. All hardware designs and documentation are made openly available.